With three players left in the game, an unfortunate situation happened when Daniel Neilson went All-in on the turn with AsKd on QhKh5d9d board, and Stanislav Zegal called the bet of 38M chips with KcQc; the river came Tc, and Stanislav won the pot.
The problem was that the dealer miscounted the stack of Stanislav, and instead of 38M, she counted 48M, which made Daniel lose an additional 10M chips; he was left with 5.2M instead of 15.2M, and the difference is translated to $116k in real money.
Daniel Neilson’s response to the situation:
“I don’t really know what to say, obviously it’s a shitty situation and I’m disappointed. At the time it happened, when she said the amount, I questioned it as I was really sure he had 37 or 38 million, but the dealer confirmed it, I assumed she was correct, and I made a mistake, I should have double checked, but I assumed being the final three of the WSOP Paradise Main Event, with all the cameras, and the dealer was confirming bet sizes with the stream crew via earpiece, I just didn’t think it was possible for them to make a mistake this big.
“For all the other all-ins a supervisor was double-checking the counts. I have no idea why they didn’t for this one, the biggest pot of the entire tournament. In general, the dealers were great, and I didn’t notice this dealer make any other mistakes. I don’t think I’ve ever complained about a dealer before; however, I did find it surprising they used a local Bahamian dealer who was very inexperienced twice for the final table. It’s not his fault as he shouldn’t have been put in the situation, but he was making many errors and announced the wrong bet size nearly every time.
“I understand that when something like this happens not much can be done, but I think being three-handed of the WSOP [Paradise] Main Event they really should have more procedures in place to make sure something like this doesn’t happen. It cost me an enormous opportunity to win a Main Event and bracelet. On top of that, after the hand the stream was showing the incorrect amount of chips I had for future hands, it made my play look horrible, the commentators even commented that my cards must be wrong as they can’t believe I would play like that. I’ve received over 100 messages asking WTF I was doing. I’m hoping they can do something to make the situation right.”
Neilson came to the final table as a chip leader and was eliminated in third place, winning $900,000.
Zegal won the whole thing and got $2,000,000 plus a golden bracelet!
